North Wind sailboats: a Barcelona yard built on naval-architecture partnerships
North Wind built its line around outside naval-architecture talent rather than a single house design. British designer Angus Primrose penned the North Wind 435 in 1980, Argentina-born Marcelo Penna's Barcelona studio later contributed the 47 and the aluminium yacht Concordia, and Sparkman & Stephens designed the semicustom deck-saloon cruisers - 43 to 68 feet - that carried the North Wind name into the 2000s, all built at the yard's home in Barcelona's harbor.
Origins and ownership
North Wind Yachts built its cruisers at a yard in Barcelona, Spain. By 2002 the company had more than 500 large cruising boats to its credit and had opened a new 38,000-square-foot building facility in the heart of Barcelona's harbor. The name carried into a later era as Monty North: the 28.8-meter sailing yacht Concordia, delivered in the early 2000s, was later branded Monty North, and by 2008 the renamed yard's hauling-out area and working sheds - still in the centre of Barcelona's harbour - were completing two more North Wind sailing yachts alongside a 30-meter motor yacht.
The designers
Angus Primrose, a British designer born in 1944, is credited with the North Wind 435, launched in 1980 - the same year Primrose died at sea during the Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR), sailing a trimaran of his own design.
Marcelo Penna, born in Argentina, moved to Spain in 1976 and founded the Marcelo Penna Group in Barcelona in 1984. Penna designed the North Wind 47, launched in 1988, and was later responsible for the interior, exterior, and naval architecture of Concordia, the aluminium sailing yacht that carried the North Wind name.
Sparkman & Stephens designed the semicustom deck-saloon cruisers that carried the North Wind name from 43 feet up to 68 feet. The line's 43 won Cruising World's 2001 award for Best Deck-Saloon Cruiser, with the magazine crediting dozens of offshore-oriented details throughout the boat; Sailing Magazine's design column likewise singled it out as "a very nice design from the Sparkman & Stephens office, built in Barcelona, Spain." By 2002 North Wind was preparing to launch a new Sparkman & Stephens-designed 58.
Construction through the eras
Construction shifted materials as the lineup grew. The 435, from the early 1980s, was built with a fibreglass hull on a long keel. By 1988 the 47 had moved to a fin keel with a partial skeg-hung rudder, still built in GRP. North Wind's early-2000s deck-saloon cruisers went further: hulls and decks were hand-laid cored fiberglass rather than resin-infused, using a Klegecell foam core and vinylester resin in the outer laminates, with an epoxy barrier to retard osmosis. Deck gear was through-bolted onto 316-stainless-steel backing plates, and the hull-to-deck joint was mechanically fastened and then glassed over, with a stainless-steel rudder structure. Concordia broke from that fiberglass norm entirely, built in aluminium with exterior styling and interior design credited to Penna.
Who North Wind is for
North Wind's range reflects several different boats built under one Barcelona name rather than one design repeated across sizes. The 435 suits buyers drawn to an early-1980s long-keel cruiser with a documented design pedigree; the Penna-designed 47, with its fin keel and partial skeg-hung rudder, sits between that older form and the deck-saloon boats that followed it; the fiberglass deck-saloon line - hand-laid and heavily hardwared - suits buyers wanting Sparkman & Stephens naval architecture in a semicustom cruiser from 43 to 68 feet; and Concordia stands apart as an aluminium yacht from Marcelo Penna's studio. What ties the range together is a yard that consistently worked with named outside designers rather than a single unattributed house line.
